The Battle of LPWAN - Who Will Survive?
Dr. Mazlan Abbas
CEO and Co-Founder of FAVORIOT | An IOT Evangelist | Keynote Speaker | IOT Thought Leader.
This battle between the different LPWAN standards will be the main topic of discussion in the coming 1-2 years. It seems each one of them has their advantages due to the different frequency, spectrum, protocol, message sizes, power, etc.
However, normally I will evaluate based on the business factors i.e. business model and whether it’s more proprietary, alliance based or 3GPP.
SigFox is seen coming from a Startup company and quite a “closed” system whereby LoRa is seen as more open. Cat-M1 and NB-IOT are seen coming from 3GPP that are more friendly to mobile operator’s natural evolution path.
RPMA coming from the company Ingenu claimed that using a single RPMA AP can cover the same area as using 18 LoRa APs or 70 SigFox APs.
I think the fate will happen to the proprietary and alliance type of standards just like WiMAX try to compete with LTE. If they are unable to take that window of opportunity, NB-IOT or Cat-M1 will be the main winner which I believed will have the bigger cake.
They are still some market that will use the proprietary and the ISM band for their own use but not as widely as NB-IOT and Cat-M1.
Unlike the era of 1G, 2G, 3G where the strategy of “Build and the customer will come”, it will not be the same as IoT. Previously, the customers are people/humans but in rolling out LPWAN, it’s more complex because the not all areas have IoT solutions. It’s like chicken and egg – why should a telco deploy when there is no demand for IoT solution?
One of the key factors is the availability of NB-IOT and CAT-M1 devices/nodes. Where are they? Which devices/sensors are equipped with that communication standards? Thus, telcos are reluctant to invest heavily until they are confident that there will be thousands or millions of devices going to get connected. Can anyone promise that?
About the Author
Dr. Mazlan Abbas is currently the Co-Founder and CEO of FAVORIOT Sdn Bhd. He is an IOT Evangelist and a Thought Leader. He received an award as 50 Most Impactful Smart Cities Leaders by World CSR 2017. He is ranked No. 20th Thought Leader in IOT by 2014 Onalytics Report – “The Internet of Things – Top 100 Thought Leaders”, ranked Top 10 in IoT Top 100 Influencers by Postscapes 2016/2017, ranked Top 100 in Smart Cities Top Experts by Agilience Authority Index May 2016. He is also a Global Vision Board Member. You can reach him on LinkedIn or Twitter. Check all his presentation slides HERE.
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7 年Making noise: https://twitter.com/uncleunvoid/status/878270713035079680
Driving up the worlds' LoRaWAN coverage from 1% to 100%
7 年I can agree with the main themes here: Sigfox = proprietary, LoRaWAN = open, NB-IoT/CatM1 = telco operators. And with the might of 3GPP behind NB-IoT/CatM1 it will hit the market strong and hard, but there is one major limitation for NB-IoT/CatM1 and that is the business model. If you look at classic M2M which is the forebear of IoT, it is treated like a phone connection. One device = one connection = one sim = one subscription. This ongoing op-ex is OK for some use-cases but it has limited M2M to really low-volume, high-value applications. If you look at the number of M2M connections that a telco reports, its actually quite low, certainly orders of magnitude less than the dream of billions of IoT devices. In my life today I have around 50 'things' connected to the internet and only a couple of them have sims & subscriptions. The rest tunnel through WiFi/BT in unlicenced spectrum and have no incremental cost of connectivity beyond my normal broadband & data allowance. These 'things' are centred around my home, office & car. But critically, in the future as IoT kicks in, I expect I'll have 200 or 300 'things' in my life and they will reach beyond my safe zone of home/office/car and in to the wider environment around me. There's no way in the world hundreds of those new 'things' are going to include subscriptions, no matter now low. It just won't be manageable. So I see CatM1 being a continuation of this relatively low-volume M2M market, and NB-IoT only having a chance to compete with LoRaWAN or SigFox if they find a way to re-think the telco business model to get away from SIMs and device-by-device subscriptions. In my experience telcos will try to keep the status quo and specifically NOT disrupt their business model and they will use licenced spectrum and the associated 3GPP technologies to ring-fence their captive market. The lifetime cost device will be high. This is why disruptors like LoRaWAN will survive the battle and have a valid role in the LPWAN market.
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7 年Ha ha legendary comment Harald, telling it like it is :-)
Senior Executive | National Security | Emerging Tech | Cybersecurity
7 年Thanks for sharing Mazlan. Conventional wisdom would point towards a rationalisation towards cellular/3GPP but that's not what's happening. My theory is the telcos have been slow to respond so innovators (LoRa alliance, SigFox) have emerged out of the vacuum out of necessity. Now they have critical mass in terms of adoption and NB-IoT & other cellular systems are still being developed. My take - Innovation won't wait